Born in 1980, more questions than answers

Second Adolescence

From what I’ve read of other women’s later life lesbian realisations, I’ve heard a lot of the ‘second adolescence’. I have this; I know this; I am living this.

What is it?

It’s being a kid in a candy store.

It’s never having known before that girls like this exist. That their cheekbones, graces and swaggers are more piercing than the prettiest boy you had ever met in your previous life. They stop your heart.

It’s appreciating these creatures for being women like any other yet set apart, somehow, in their stance, warmth and backbone. My god they have backbone; they are not there to please you. Yet please me they do, beyond scale.

It’s finally being an active participant in sex: taking in your partner, fixating on her fixed shoulders and her soft sides, living your desire as a long-coiled up snake inside you which is finally out and curling round her.

It’s standing firm and weak in your desire in the immediacy of the onslaught that hits you in the absence of filter; the absence of should.

It’s going to bars and looking and actually, finally, finding. The jolt of the returned gaze, the smile, the brushing past the softness and electricity that’s all new to you and still so enticing after six months on the scene that even one weekend off is a little difficult, ‘cos you’re addicted.

It’s the shirts, the jeans, the tank tops, the beer, the soft hair, the strength, the beauty.

It’s showing up for sex, for her, for life. You can’t do this by halves when you want it this much.

It’s when it strikes you that you were like this all along. That you don’t have to change anything to fit in here. That they are you and you are them.